by Cody Holt | Dec 18, 2015
Theory: Listening to classical music while studying helps with focus, creativity, and memory retention
Summary of the Belief: It is believed, and widely taught that listening to classical music, especially specific types of classical music, help with learning for all students.
For this challenge we decided to up the stakes by not providing the research. If you need a starting point you can try:
Google Scholar
Gale Databases Your campus media specialist should have the password.
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
Complete this form to finish today’s challenge.
by Cody Holt | Dec 17, 2015
Theory: Schools kill creativity
Summary of the Belief: Sir Ken Robinson argues that creativity is being choked out of children by years of public education that do allow children the time to think freely and create.
For this challenge we decided to up the stakes by not providing the research. If you need a starting point you can try:
Google Scholar
Gale Databases Your campus media specialist should have the password.
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
Complete this form to finish today’s challenge.
by Cody Holt | Dec 16, 2015
Theory: You Can Help Poor Children to Learn Just by Giving Them Access to Computers
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: Sugata Mitra placed computers in the slums of India and, without any teaching or guidance, children were able to learn spontaneously from them. This has led to the belief that simply providing access to computers leads to a positive impact on learning.
Points About the Belief:
- Mitra’s research is very infrequently cited in the scientific literature. The majority of references are made by Mitra himself or by people from his entourage.
- The emphasis in India was quite heavily on gaming and play.
- The computer skills learned were largely basic skills. Without guidance, only a very few learners were able to progress to more complex matters.
- Children in the control group of the project were only given questionnaires at the beginning and end of the project, while those in the experimental group were tested every month. It has been conclusively proven that regular testing has a positive learning effect.
- In a similar project, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program which dramatically increased access to computers, there was no evidence that there was increased learning in math or languages. The program did show some beneficial effects on cognitive skills.
Resources:
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
Complete this form to finish today’s challenge.
by Cody Holt | Dec 15, 2015
Theory: You Can Learn Effectively through Problem-Based Education
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: Learning to solve problems is of utmost important (Popper) and to achieve this goal, students must use problem solving as an instructional method. With this, the solving of a problem by the learners themselves is central, with the teacher acting in a supporting role.
Points About the Belief:
- The use of problem solving as an instructional method ignores human working memory limitations. Working memory is very limited in duration and capacity. Baddeley described how information stored in working memory and not rehearsed is lost within 30 seconds. This limit only applies to new, yet to be learned information that has not been stored in long-term memory. For novice learners of a new subject or concept, problem solving is only possible by using weak methods such as means/ends analysis, which requires the student to consider differences between the goal state and the given state of the problem and to search blindly for steps to reduce those differences.
- Problem solving can be taught in more effective ways with the use of goal-free problems, worked-out examples, and completion problems.
- Problem solving as an instructional method only becomes effective when learners have already developed useful cognitive schemas in a domain.
- Research shows that problem-based education is not really suitable for acquiring new knowledge. But if you use problem-based learning to apply previously acquired knowledge to a new problem, that has a significantly positive effect.
Resources:
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
Complete this form to finish today’s challenge.
by Cody Holt | Dec 14, 2015
Theory: We Are Good Multitaskers
Compiled by Lori Gracey | Excutive Director | TCEA.org
Summary of the Belief: Many publications and media sources claim that young people nowadays not only are able to multitask, but also are experts at multitasking. Multitasking is the ability to carry out two or more things that require thinking simultaneously.
Points About the Belief:
- We are tempted to believe that we can multitask because, at some level intuitively, it seems to make sense.
- When people have so much experience in performing a task that it becomes fully automated, we are able to carry out multiple processes.
- The brain has strict constraints about the number of cognitive processes it can process; this is known as the cognitive bottleneck.
Resources:
Your Analysis:
Is the theory:
- Myth
- Unproven
- Based on truth
What This Should Mean to Teachers:
Complete this form to finish today’s challenge.
